Oregon To Pause Accepting New License Applications

[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]O[/dropcap]regon residents hoping to break into the saturated cannabis market in their state will have to submit their application quickly if they want to be considered before 2019.

The Oregon Liquor Control Commission, which oversees cannabis licensing in the state, will be temporarily pausing the processing of new recreational cannabis license applications to catch up on thousands of previously received applications. It will only be processing applications and renewals made before a June 15 deadline until next year.

“We need to focus on what we have and maintain it and get caught up on the backlog,” said Mark Pettinger, OLCC spokesman. “We want people to be aware of it. We’ll continue to accept applications.”

OLCC had expected receive about a thousand recreational cannabis license applications and awarded around 800. As of this week, they have received over 3,400 recreational cannabis business license applications and are expecting to approve around 2,000 by the end of the year.

Oregon has changed its law to create a mandatory tracking system for cannabis grown in the state. The Cannabis Tracking System will oversee the growers, processors and dispensaries that are now required to register with the system. Those include over 2,000 growers, 763 dispensaries hundreds of other businesses in the cannabis supply chain.  Up to 2,000 cannabis farms are now required to register with the tracking system.

“In order to ensure that the OLCC is fulfilling its regulatory duties and providing timely responses to businesses in the industry, we must focus on the current participants in the system and preserve for the Oregon Legislature its consideration of the necessity for further statutory controls on marijuana licensing in 2019,” said Steve Marks, Executive Director of the Oregon Liquor Control Commission. Additional staff for the department has also been approved, but the department has found that it takes a significant amount of staff and resources to process the license renewals.

Since April of 2016, the OLCC has issued 29,000 cannabis worker permits and 1,900 growing, processing, distributing and other business licenses. With the steady stream of applications, the timeline for processing had lengthened considerably, even with additional staff being added to the department by borrowing from other departments.

Those in Oregon’s cannabis industry are concerned that the oversaturation of the market will drive down prices and some are already leaving or changing from medical to recreational cannabis growth. “We forecasted this, but we didn’t predict how fast it occurred,” said Obie Stricker, CEO of Grown Rogue, a Medford-based cannabis farm and distribution operation. “What we have are market forces creating price compression.”